Word: prong
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...Offensives. Pursuing the same strategy that carried them from Stalingrad to Kharkov last winter, the Russians had waited until the German drive on Kursk spent itself, then had launched a mighty counterattack. This quickly developed into a two-pronged offensive-actually two offensives - along a 300-mile front. One prong jabbed hard at the heels of the Germans routed at Orel, liberated hundreds of Russian villages and advanced toward Bryansk. Farther to the north, other Russian forces stabbed southwest from Vyazma toward the main Nazi base at Smolensk...
From Belgorod the second prong, led by tanks and motorized columns, slashed southwestward to push swiftly across the flat steppes northwest of Kharkov. The speed was so great in some sectors that the Germans abandoned much heavy equipment in the flight. Some mobile units raced to within 16 miles of Kharkov, one encircled several Nazi garrisons. A powerful secondary drive starting from Chuguev, 25 miles southeast of Kharkov, threatened a new pincers squeeze on the Ukrainian stronghold...
...news last week was fragmentary. Virtually all that General Dwight Eisenhower's headquarters revealed was that Allied forces were moving steadily eastward from Algeria. The advance was four-pronged -one prong aimed at the Gulf of Gabes in order to cut any communication with Rommel's troops in Libya, the other prongs designed to make a scythelike sweep against Bizerte and Tunis. In a ring around Bizerte and Tunis the Axis forces...
...week's end one column was ploughing into Gabes. Axis reserves, probably from Tripolitania, had either infiltrated through the Allied southern prong or dashed ahead of it and were streaking northward to the aid of Tunis. Fighting all along the contracting front grew heavier. Inexorably, to the north, the scythe swung against Nehring's iron ring...
...Africa lost to the Axis one prong of the pincers (the other is in Russia) with which the Axis was preparing to pinch off the whole Middle East will have been destroyed...